he might have been—­an ambassador, a minister, a chamberlain, a poet—­and rich.  He gives up six years of his energy at that stage of his life when a man is ready to submit to the hardships of any apprenticeship—­to a petticoat, which he outstrips in the career of ingratitude, for the woman who has thrown over her first lover is certain sooner or later to desert the second.  Adolphe is, in fact, a tow-haired German, who has not spirit enough to be false to Ellenore.  There are Adolphes who spare their Ellenores all ignominious quarreling and reproaches, who say to themselves, ’I will not talk of what I have sacrificed; I will not for ever be showing the stump of my wrist to let that incarnate selfishness I have made my queen,’ as Ramorny does in The Fair Maid of Perth.  But men like that, my dear, get cast aside.

“Adolphe is a man of birth, an aristocratic nature, who wants to get back into the highroad to honors and recover his social birthright, his blighted position.—­You, at this moment, are playing both parts.  You are suffering from the pangs of having lost your position, and think yourself justified in throwing over a hapless lover whose misfortune it has been that he fancied you so far superior as to understand that, though a man’s heart ought to be true, his sex may be allowed to indulge its caprices.”

“And do you suppose that I shall not make it my business to restore to you all you have lost by me?  Be quite easy,” said Madame de la Baudraye, astounded by this attack.  “Your Ellenore is not dying; and if God gives her life, if you amend your ways, if you give up courtesans and actresses, we will find you a better match than a Felicie Cardot.”

The two lovers were sullen.  Lousteau affected dejection, he aimed at appearing hard and cold; while Dinah, really distressed, listened to the reproaches of her heart.

“Why,” said Lousteau presently, “why not end as we ought to have begun —­hide our love from all eyes, and see each other in secret?”

“Never!” cried the new-made Countess, with an icy look.  “Do you not comprehend that we are, after all, but finite creatures?  Our feelings seem infinite by reason of our anticipation of heaven, but here on earth they are limited by the strength of our physical being.  There are some feeble, mean natures which may receive an endless number of wounds and live on; but there are some more highly-tempered souls which snap at last under repeated blows.  You have—­”

“Oh! enough!” cried he.  “No more copy!  Your dissertation is unnecessary, since you can justify yourself by merely saying—­’I have ceased to love!’”

“What!” she exclaimed in bewilderment.  “Is it I who have ceased to love?”

“Certainly.  You have calculated that I gave you more trouble, more vexation than pleasure, and you desert your partner—­”

“I desert!——­” cried she, clasping her hands.

“Have not you yourself just said ’Never’?”